Contacting Families

Once you have your list of families to contact, you may begin phone calls. Recruitment calls should be done in the LENA/Recruitment room.

Transferring the phone line: You will need to transfer the line from the main lab phone, to the one in the recruitment room. On the main lab phone, press "CFwdALL" and then enter 2854. This means that you can now also receive calls from the recruitment room. Remember to transfer the line back when you are done with recruitment. To do this, go back to the main lab phone, and press "CFwdALL". You should hear a beep.

Making calls: Always dial 9 before any phone number (9-xxx-xxxx). If it is a long-distance number, dial 9, then 1, and then the phone number (9-1-xxx-xxxx). You’ll need to use the speaker function on the phone because the handset doesn’t have sound.

ALWAYS update the database when you contact families. Fill out Booking Comments with information about contact (date, time, lab initials, comment, your initials, name of the child you are calling for), and Notes if necessary (any other relevant detail that would be useful to know).

• Examples (XXX refers to study name):

  • "Called for XXX and sent recruitment email"

  • "Called for XXX but no answer - will try again"

  • "Called for XXX and left a voicemail"

We can contact families a total of 3 times. Typically, you will do as follows:

• Call #1 - if no answer, you do not leave a voicemail but rather try to call again at a later date

• Call#2 - of no answer, leave a voicemail

• Contact #3 (optional) - if you do not get a call back, and at least 1 week has passed since call #2, you can send an email about the study.

• If you have not been able to reach a family after 2-3 attempts, you may try again after 60 days have passed since the last contact attempt, if they are still eligible for the study.

Successful Recruitment: When you have recruited a participant over the phone (after screening and meeting eligibility criteria), you must do the following:

• Update the database booking notes (as mentioned above)

• Add participant info to the study's recruitment log

• Send the email with the booking link if they did not book over the phone

Make sure to check lab voicemails regularly when you are recruiting. When using the lab main phone, you will be prompted to put in a PIN and then press #. This PIN is taped to the main phone.

• Every so often it needs to be changed. The voicemail service will give a warning in advance and explain how to change it. It will need to be changed to a different combination of 10 numbers (although you can keep the same four numbers used in the previous code but change their combination). Once you have done this, make sure you write this new PIN down and tape it to the phone. Save it in any other necessary places.

See next section for Call Scripts.